Warriors center Andrew Bogut should play again this season, and his career shouldn't be in jeopardy, according to Dr. Neel Anand, the director of spine trauma and minimally invasive surgery at Cedars-Sinai Spine Center in Los Angeles.

If the back spasms that will keep Bogut sidelined for a third straight game Tuesday are indeed being caused by a disk protrusion, as the Warriors say, Anand predicted that the center should be completely recovered in two to six weeks.

Even if it's six weeks, Bogut still would have the final two weeks of the regular season to practice or play his way into shape for the playoffs.

"I've obviously not seen him and not seen his MRI, but 95 to 99 percent of athletes like him will get right back" on the court, Anand said. "I'm being totally conservative when I say that 99 percent of people with a protruding disk go on to live a totally normal life."

And there are tons of test cases. Anand suggested that if you randomly took MRIs of 100 people walking down the street, 60 to 70 would have at least one protruding or bulging disk. At some point in their lives, he said, about four of every five people will have a protruding disk.